Saturday, December 15, 2012

Breakfast Links are served! As the holidays approach, many of this week's links have a decidedly festive flavor, and who'll argue with that? Please enjoy our weekly collection of favorite links to other web sites and blogs, photographs, and articles gathered for you from around the Twitterverse.
• And the lady wore fur: 18th c. ladies keeping fashionably warm.
• How to survive the plague, 1603: avoid sex, drink wine, & put a clove in your mouth when going out.
• "Sensitive to the finest gradations in kittenly meditation & motion": animal painter Horatio Henry Couldery (1832-1918).
• The cover of the first edition of the classic cookbook Joy of Cooking was exotic & beautiful.
• Covert force: hundreds of women fought in the Civil War disguised as men.
• Meet the Duke of Devonshire, aka the duke of puppies.
• For your holiday baking: Georgian Sugar Cakes - 18th c. recipe, plus a modern version.
• Truth or myth? Early American women spun & wove their own fabric.
• Arms and the maiden: the symbols of Joan of Arc.
• Christmas Cake & the Little Mouse: excerpt from "Aunt Affable's New Book for Children", London, 1844.
• Pomanders, elegant & sweet-smelling personal jewels used from the 13th-17th c. to protect against disease.
• Ghosts from the past meld with the present: a walk through time in Spitalfields.
• A soldier's story of World War I in words and pictures.
• Scottish for Christmas: America's use of tartan for the holidays.
• Green 1890s purse & dress embellished with copper, green & silver beads & sequins.
• "Dickens, Scrooge, and the Victorian Poor", an outstanding exhibition site to explore.
• Skeletons from the Mutter Museum show the deformed ribcage of a 19th c. woman who wore corsets vs. a normal ribcage.
• A NYC retailer in 1906 solves the problem of low-paid working girls: marriage.
• Did the ancient Romans invent Christmas?
• Historical hair: the auction market for hair from long-dead famous heads.
• Eighty-five years of amazing Rockettes costumes.
• Not for the squeamish: long before the FDA, there were fecal medicines.
• Fancy a different dessert? Recipes for quaking pudding, 17th c. to present.
• A preacher & a policeman debate whether the use of bicycles cause ladies to develop loose morals, 1899.
• An antiquarian goes wine tasting in 1698.
• The height of 15th c. fashion: the wardrobe of Margaret of Denmark, Queen of Scotland.
• Georgian inventor Sarah Guppy: better at inventing things than choosing a husband.
• The horrifying balloon ride of death, 1875.
• How the American Civil War helped sentimentalize Christmas.
• Fantastic food photos recreate a 16th c. supper with Shakespeare.
• Debunking another history myth: why Americans call porcelain dinnerware "china."
• Christmas stocking tradition comes from recently laundered ladies' stockings that were hung to dry.Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter at @2nerdyhistorygirls for daily updates!

Just want to express my appreciation for your weekly links lists. I always find articles of interest, blogs to follow, and sometimes bits to share with my 8 year old son, whose current passion is military history. I don't know how you find the time to do these postings, but I thank you heartily for them!

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A Polite Explanation

There’s a big difference in how we use history. But we’re equally nuts about it. To us, the everyday details of life in the past are things to talk about, ponder, make fun of -- much in the way normal people talk about their favorite reality show.

We talk about who’s wearing what and who’s sleeping with whom. We try to sort out rumor or myth from fact. We thought there must be at least three other people out there who think history’s fascinating and fun, too. This blog is for them.